Climate change and energy are the biggest stories of the 21st Century, though not everyone gets it yet. The issues are so big that they defy understanding. In this blog, I try to make sense of the energy-climate knot by writing about the people seeking solutions and the technology they're inventing.

I am a longtime journalist who also explores the topic for The New York Times, Sierra, Popular Science, Smithsonian and other publications. I write often about India, since my wife is from there, and sometimes cross over into my passion for adventure sports like mountaineering, surfing and kayaking. No one understands the climate like an outdoorsman.

The energy-climate space abounds with ideas, conflicts, contradictions, and agonizing choices that will have a deep impact on our lives and those of our children. And there's money to be made in solving these problems. Lots of it.

Geothermal Company Drills Into A Volcano

A geothermal-energy company is shattering rock nearly two miles under Oregon’s largest volcano to see if a new drilling technique could succeed where similar attempts to make clean power have failed.

The pilot project is underway at Newberry Volcano despite concerns that have dogged other “enhanced geothermal” projects, such as small earthquakes, and techniques that are similar to the controversial practice of fracking. Oh, and there’s the landscape’s habit of exploding.

Newberry Volcano, a massive hump rising south of Bend, Oregon, is 10 times the area of Mt. St. Helens and roughly the size of Rhode Island. “The Sleeping Giant,”as the U.S. Geological Survey calls it, last erupted 1,200 to 1,300 years ago.

“It’s a pretty high-threat volcano,” said Benjamin Pauk, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, in an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting. “It’s very likely it’s going to erupt in the future.”

However, this area to the west of the volcano has been provoked once before without incident. Starting in 2006, a company called Davenport Newberry spent about $30 million to drill 10,000 feet down in hopes of finding water amid the 550° F rock that could be returned to the surface as steam. But the well was dry.

The current, $43.8 million project emerged when a new partner, AltaRock Energy, came on board with a technique that promised to add water where none existed. The project is half-funded by the Department of Energy, which estimates that tapping very deep hot rock like that at Newberry could produce 10 percent of the U.S. power supply without burning fossil fuels or contributing to climate change.

AltaRock’s plan is to send pulses of highly pressurized water into the rock, forcing existing cracks to open wider so water can flow. Cold water is then flushed through the scalding-hot rock and returned to the surface as steam, which can be used to create electricity. The cooled water is then reinjected back into the earth.

AltaRock claims the rock-breaking technique, known as “hydroshearing,” uses none of the sometimes-secret and possibly toxic chemicals that the oil and gas industries employ in hydrofracking. The technique does use a small amount of chemicals that have created some local controversy, but the Bureau of Land Management claims they’re safe.

AltaRock claims that by creating a large network of cracks at multiple depths, it can lower the price of an enhanced geothermal plant, which is estimated to costs up to three times as much as a coal plant of similar size.

In an interview with Sustainable Business Oregon, AltaRock’s president Susan Petty said:

“What we think we can do at Newberry is at least double the production from each well. If we could double the production of the well we could cut the cost of production from 30 percent to 35 percent. If we are really successful, we could cut it by 40 percent to 45 percent and that would make this a really economically successful proposition.”

The drilling and the surges of water can create small earthquakes, most under a magnitude of 1 on the Richter scale but some that could spike to 3.4 or 4. Such “micro-quakes” spelled the end of a prior AltaRock project at the Geyers in California project by another developer in Basel, Switzerland, where temblors left neighbors shaken and angry. Fears of a similar outcome contributed to AltaRock abandoning a similar project at the Geysers in California, a site that sits near earthquake fault lines. The drill area by Newberry Volcano is much more remote.

If this experimental project is successful, Davenport Newberry plans to apply for permission to turn the site into a commercial power plant.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Comments

It’s too bad that Mr. Ferris didn’t actually read the article in the New Your Times about AltaRock’s work in the Geysers. If he had, he would have noticed that there was no mention that, as he states, “‘micro-quakes’ spelled the end of a prior AltaRock project at the Geysers in California.” In actuality, what the NYT article does say is that it seems AltaRock had to leave the Geysers project due to drilling problems. Enhanced Geothermal Systems have the potential to provide emission less renewable base load energy without the pitfalls of wind, solar, or nuclear. To try and scare readers who are not familiar with EGS with untruths in order to sell an article is irresponsible.

Thanks for pointing out the error, Geoff. I’ve corrected the story to reflect the correct information, which is that the earthquakes occurred in Basel, Switzerland, by a developer who was not AltaRock. I also added that AltaRock’s project at the Geysers was weighed down by fears of an earthquake, but that those were not the deciding factor.

Fact checking? We don’t need no stinkin’ fact checking! AltaRock’s project at the Geysers did not generate any earthquakes. We stopped the project due to drilling difficulties. There are dozens of geothermal projects with wells drilled into the sides and calderas of volcanoes in Italy, Indonesia, the Philippines, El Salvador, Mexico, Japan and Nicaragua. There have been three previous EGS projects in or near volcanoes: Hijiori and Ogachi in Japan and Fenton Hill in New Mexico. No volcanic eruptions have been caused by any of these geothermal projects. The DOE supports this project as do AltaRock’s investors because EGS technology has the potential to make geothermal, the only baseload renewable, economic over a much wider area.

Hi Susan, thanks for the comment. Since I follow the renewable-energy scene, I’d like to know more about the geothermal and EGS projects you mention that are co-located by volcanoes. Where did you get your information?

I have 35 years of experience in the geothermal business. I worked on the Fenton Hill project, the world’s first EGS/HDR project and was a panel member on the MIT study of the future of geothermal energy. I’ve been stimulating geothermal wells since 1981 at Raft River including a commercial stimulation of a geothermal well on the side of a volcano in Indonesia.

I have 35 years of experience in the geothermal business. I worked on the Fenton Hill project, the world’s first EGS/HDR project and was a panel member on the MIT study of the future of geothermal energy. I’ve been stimulating geothermal wells since 1981 at Raft River including a commercial stimulation of a geothermal well on the side of a volcano in Indonesia which more than doubled the flow rate.

I know someone Robert Barnheiser Rob Barnheiser CEO of americleaninggreen.com. Robert Barnheiser Rob Barnheiser started a campaign with his company americleaninggreen.com that there should not be any interruption by the people on the nature on anything.Let the nature be like it. Robert Barnheiser started this campaign seven years ago with his some fellow & He is now successful in his community.Robert Barnheiser started green cleaning service with americleaninggreen.com seventeen years ago.

So why a company will drill at the Volcano & interrupt it’s natural eruption.Let it be like it, find a new way but not to hurt the nature.

What about the drilling mud going in to the fractures and polluting the water networks? This is way different from oil and gas because the goal IS to pump water in the system which is not closed and fracture up the rock! The geothermal industry’s calling a potato a potatoe is just sad.. It is what it is. Using water to force open fractures. Is the epa testing these holes to see how far the drilling mud is penetrating or weather or not heavy metals are infiltrating in to the water table? Finally,,,, shooting high pressurized water in to an active volcano is like swatting a hornets nest to find honey. What’s their plan in case they have a real rupture due to the newly created fracture network? Run?

You describe what AltaRock does as “shattering rock.” While “shattering” is certainly an exciting adjective, it is inaccurate, which you appear to acknowledge later in the story when you say AltaRock plans to force “existing cracks to open wider so water can flow.” However, you still characterize it as, principally, a “rock-breaking technique.” It is not, at least, not in the way you imply.

The AltaRock approach is specifically designed to not shatter rock. Shattering the rock would constitute a failure because this does not create useful water pathways. The water pressures AltaRock will use are too low to do this. Instead, it will reactivate existing small fractures in the rock and network them together, much like in a natural geothermal system. In contrast, hydraulic fracturing uses much higher pressures that are intended to shatter and “rubblize” the rock.

See http://pubs.geothermal-library.org/lib/grc/1028449.pdf for a description of hydroshearing. Also, read the 2008 MIT report that describes the evidence backing this approach, “The Future of Geothermal Energy,” found at

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/future_geothermal.html

Also, AltaRock’s technology is not a “drilling technique,” as you and others call it. In geology, as in Webster’s, drilling means “boring a hole in something.” In the present case, the hole–that is, the well–has already been drilled by Davenport, in 2008. AltaRock is now going to do something in the deep part of that preexisting hole to enhance water paths in the rock near the hole aimed at creating an economically viable geothermal resource.

So, to belabor a point that the media seem to totally not understand, it’s incorrect to call this a “drilling” technique. It would be like calling the laying of a sprinkler system in your lawn, or the filling of a swimming pool with water, “digging techniques” — the holes already exist when the other activities start.

Also, it is not correct to say AltaRock is testing a method that “could succeed where similar attempts to make clean power have failed.” There are, in fact, two existing, operating EGS projects in Europe — one in Germany (Landau) and one in France (Soultz), as googling these will attest. These were also alluded to in the OPB video about Newberry that you reference in your article.

More generally, you conflate AltaRock’s activities in the preexisting well with the supposed hazards arising from drilling holes on the flanks of dormant volcanoes. These hazards are alluded to without reference to any opinions from experts or even people in the street.

In fact, numerous geothermal wells have been drilled into volcano flanks with no ill effects. For example, the pair Davenport drilled at Newberry were preceded by 22 others dating back to 1977, including two in 1995 by Ormat that were as deep as Davenport’s, 10,000 feet. See Oregon state’s spreadsheet of geothermal permits for this information –

Additionally, Chapter 4 of the MIT report (see above) discusses at length three actual EGS experiments on or near volcanoes — Fenton Hill in the U.S., and Hijiori and Ogachi in Japan. These were already mentioned here in a comment by Susan Petty. Again, no harm, no foul came of these. Madame Pele was not angered.

This conflation is also evidenced by your blog entry’s title (“Geothermal Company Drills Into A Volcano”), which references Davenport’s drilling into the well, and the lead paragraph, which references AltaRock’s hydroshearing technique. Which is it about?

Also more generally, the whole “Oh, and there’s the landscape’s habit of exploding” angle to your story sensationalizes a non-issue, one pumped up in the past two weeks by news outlets.

Highlighting the gut feelings of non-experts that drilling a well or hydroshearing in it will provoke a dormant volcano to erupt is not very responsible if you don’t also solicit expert opinions in the matter.

So, when you simply quote a USGS “geologist” (Ben Pauk actually calls himself a geophysicist, according to his Linkedin profile) as saying Newberry could erupt in the future without also getting his opinion on whether the AltaRock demonstration project could rouse the “Sleeping Giant,” that was an opportunity you missed to bring clarity to a story where others have slapped together superficial impressions.